


A Walking Contradiction

by DratTheRat



Series: Next Time Around [2]
Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Cuthbert Lives, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Brief Adolescent Sexuality (re: the Oracle), Drawing of the Three - rewrite, Gen, Mild Language, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Jake, Repetition, Supernatural Elements, Surreal Moments, The Gunslinger - Rewrite, The Waste Lands - rewrite, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-06-26 02:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DratTheRat/pseuds/DratTheRat
Summary: Jake felt himself take a second irreversible step toward a potentially deadly trap.  The first had been when he decided to follow the gunslinger and make himself useful, but this step was far more precarious: they were beginning to make him feel special . . .





	1. And the Gunslinger Followed

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been in the works for ages. While I was writing [A Pilgrim and a Preacher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13750605/chapters/31598685), I had some idea I was going to re-read the whole series and write a story in this world for every book from the perspective of a different character each time. Hahaha. 
> 
> Anyway, every so often I come back and poke at what I started back in Fall 2017, and now I have been inspired to finally commit to posting this installment. Whether there will be any more . . . we'll see.
> 
> Now complete!

For the first time since he woke up with no memory, Jake stepped into the desert. Even though he had been at this shelter for nearly a week, he had not dared to venture out. What if he should lose his way or meet a wild animal or be surprised by someone like that creepy man in black? He felt safer with the gunslinger, but that didn’t make the desert more inviting; it was difficult to walk in the sand, and the wind blew it into his eyes, and the sun beat down on him with baked, hammering heat. 

The gunslinger gave Jake one of his water bags to carry. “Drink when you feel you need to,” he instructed gravely. “The three of us will have more than enough to make it back if we take care not to let ourselves grow faint.”

Jake drank. He wanted to ask the gunslinger where he came from and why he was following the man in black and why it was so important to chase after him that he and his friend had set out across the desert without enough water for both of them to survive, but he didn’t. Instead, he found a place in the gunslinger’s long shadow and trudged along and tried his hardest to remember if he’d ever had a friend he’d die for or the other way around. His mind came up blank.

As the miserable walk went on and on, the blankness turned to wandering. Jake imagined that he was the gunslinger and that he was walking the other way - away from the morning sun instead of towards it. He imagined the gunslinger’s desperation: to cross, to drink, to chase, to catch. It was easier than he’d expected to imagine that emotion. Jake had been desperate, too, when he had first arrived, although his goal was different: to survive. They must have been so desperate to chase and catch that to survive had slipped their minds, Jake thought.

He imagined he was the gunslinger, standing on top of a hill - that hill, in the far distance. At the top of the hill, he would have stopped to speak to his friend, but his friend would have been missing. With the sun above him now, it was easy to imagine how confused the poor gunslinger would have been. Jake took a long drink and another. As the sun traversed over his head to his back, the drinking became as automatic as the hard trudge through the sand.

The gunslinger would have been confused: was his friend there at all? He would have dreamed, before, that he had been alone all of this time. The dream might have gone something like this:

“Blow that fucking horn!” the gunslinger would say each time, and his friend always would. His friend’s right eye would hang limp from its mangled socket, and there would be blood in his teeth when he grinned, but he would still have enough breath draw a clear, low note from the ancient horn. Afterwards, the gunslinger would take his hand, so slick with blood, and they would raise their guns together. His friend would not have had enough time to adjust to seeing with one eye to shoot well, but the gunslinger would not care; they would have only a few shells left and many enemies. Before long, he would lose his grip on Cuthbert’s hand. Sometimes he would take the Horn of Eld, and sometimes he would leave it lying next to Cuthbert’s corpse. In this dream, Cuthbert always died. 

Jake was the gunslinger up on that distant hill sometime this early morning. He squinted up into the white hot sun. Even close to dawn, the heat was dizzying. Had he imagined Cuthbert here with him? The journey through the desert had been brutal, and heat stroke could play tricks on any mind, however rational and trained, however cold.

Indeed, there had been a moment when he had contemplated sending Cuthbert to his death. He had considered it his duty to waste them down to the last man right up until that fateful moment when he hadn’t. Was it possible that he had looked in Cuthbert’s bright, brown eye, seen that, despite his many wounds, he might still live, and then, instead of staying Cuthbert’s hand upon the Horn, encouraged him to blow the blast? Had he raced with him hand in hand towards - instead of from - the battle only to, somehow, survive himself? Could he forgive himself if these decades with Cuthbert were the dream, and the nightmare that had haunted him so often all that time were real? 

The gunslinger shook his head. He had not dreamed that dream since they entered the desert. Instead, he kept dreaming of water.

It was time for Jake’s drink. In his mind, the gunslinger drank, too: he took a sip from his water skin to stave off the worst of the dehydration and was pleasantly surprised to notice how much he had left. The journey would be difficult, say true, but he would easily be able to reach the waystation he could make out in the distance from his vantage point atop the hill. The water settled cold in the pit of his stomach as he looked again for Cuthbert, this time behind him.

There he was. The gunslinger had not dreamed him after all. His oldest, dearest friend lay crumpled in the sand a little farther down the hill, and he was not moving. The gunslinger shook his sealed water skin, felt the weight of the remaining water there, and knew.

“You fool!” he cried. His voice scraped painfully against his throat, and the sound that issued forth was broken. Even with the extra water, his body had been brutalized by the dry heat. “Have you no wish to live?”

Cuthbert stirred. Slowly, he propped his head up on his fist and seemed to look up at the gunslinger; his face was in black shadow under the wide brim of his hat. He huffed out a sound, which, knowing Cuthbert, might have been a laugh, then pulled himself forward another foot and rolled onto his back.

The gunslinger threw his water skin at him. “What is the meaning of this?”

Cuthbert raised one hand a little and let it flop back down into the sand. He smiled wanly at the blazing sky. 

Sighing, the gunslinger trudged back down the hill. He sat on Cuthbert’s left side and ran his knuckle through the stubble on his cheek - still mostly brown - until his good eye opened. He squinted and opened his mouth, but no sound was forthcoming.

The gunslinger retrieved his water skin from where it had fallen near Cuthbert’s shoulder, but Cuthbert’s hand was on his before he could open it. 

He swallowed audibly, a creaky, sticky sound. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he whispered.

The gunslinger ripped his hand from Cuthbert’s weakened grip and opened up the skin.

“Drink,” he demanded.

Cuthbert turned his face away.

“Drink,” he repeated. “There is a building not five miles hence. You can make it.”

Cuthbert turned back, smiling. His lips cracked. “ _You_ can,” he whispered. Then, he began to cough.

The sound was dry and terrible, as if his lungs were full of sand. The gunslinger gathered him in his arms and held him until he stopped. Cuthbert had always been thin, but he had only felt this fragile once before: in the days after Jericho Hill.

“You will drink enough to speak with me, at least,” the gunslinger commanded. 

He propped Cuthbert up against his chest and raised the water skin to his lips. Cuthbert brought a shaking hand up underneath the gunslinger’s and tipped the skin so he could take a tiny sip. He swallowed, took another sip, then pushed the water skin away.

“We did not have enough water for both of us to cross the desert. I have made my choice.”

“I released you from your obligation,” the gunslinger whispered back. The words felt hollow in his mouth.

“My choice,” Cuthbert repeated.

“Do you not wish to live?”

“I have no wish to die.” 

“Come, then. To the top of the hill.”

The gunslinger helped Cuthbert to his hands and knees and secured his hat back on his head. Half crawling, half dragging, they made their way to the top of the hill where Cuthbert collapsed flat on his stomach with his peeling, sunburned hands under his chin. While he surveyed the land, the gunslinger sat beside him.

“There,” he pointed.

“Mmm,” Cuthbert agreed. He smacked his lips. “Too weak.”

“If you had not poured your water into mine while I was sleeping, you would not be. What a pair of fools we are. I dreamed of running water.”

“No,” croaked Cuthbert. “Then we both might be too weak.”

And this was true. The gunslinger knew that he could make it to the shelter easily in his current state, but without the extra water would he have been strong enough? How much more water than Cuthbert had he already drunk?

The gunslinger rested his hand on the hot nape of Cuthbert’s neck, under the brim of his hat, and toyed with the short, sweat-stiff strands of his fine hair. Cuthbert laid his face down on his hands. After a moment, he stirred.

“Race you to the bottom?” A smile was in his parched and creaking voice.

With obvious effort, he rose to his knees, pitched himself over the peak of the hill, and rolled clumsily down the other side. The gunslinger trailed after.

“Your guns will need cleaning,” he admonished.

Cuthbert spat sand. He arranged himself on his back, leaning up the incline of the hill with his hat shading his face. He shrugged and laid his right hand on his gun and let it rest there. “Go on.” He raised his left hand long enough to point, then let it fall, limp, in his lap. 

“I promise to come back.”

“If . . .” Cuthbert nodded. 

The gunslinger would have known what "if" meant: If he was able; if there was water; if he could save him without losing his own life. He would have knelt beside his friend and tipped his hat back, tenderly, to brush the sand from Cuthbert’s face. He would have run his hand along his skin and stubble, memorizing the shape of his long nose, the curve of his left eyebrow and the patch that covered where his right eye socket used to be. He might have even cupped his chin and kissed him on the lips. Even in the final stages of his dehydration, Cuthbert’s one eye would have been so bright.

“Come walk in front of me.” 

The gunslinger's command brought Jake’s mind to the present. His vivid fantasy had carried him for miles, and now the shadows on the other side of them were long. 

The gunslinger stopped walking for a moment, and Jake passed him and stepped gratefully into his shade. The back of his neck burned as though the sun still shone on it. He turned around and squinted at the gunslinger’s silhouette.

“We’ll save him, right?” Jake asked. He didn’t like to think of Cuthbert - he was sure that was the friend’s name, surer than he was of his own history - he didn’t like to think of Cuthbert dying there alone.

With the sun behind him, the gunslinger’s expression was impossible to see. “I promised to come back,” he said.

Jake did his best to smile. He took a long drink and forced his sore feet to keep lifting his lumpy, sand filled shoes. “I know.” 

***

By the time the sun began to sink over the highest distant peak, Jake could see Cuthbert lying motionless in the crook of the hill, exactly as he had envisioned. The air began to cool immediately, but, as it did, the wind came up and battered them with sand. 

When they reached the man himself, they were in shadow, but the wind had not let up. 

The gunslinger knelt beside his friend, whose face was hidden by a pale, wide brimmed hat, tipped forward to protect him from the sun and wind. 

“Cuthbert,” he said and shook his shoulder, “I have returned as promised.” 

Jake smiled to himself. He had been right about the name. How had he guessed? Suddenly, his premonition was unnerving, and he shivered as the sharp wind made off with his sweat. Cuthbert had not responded.

The gunslinger tore off the pale hat and let it go. When the wind took hold of it, Jake chased it down. He put it on and cinched the drawstring tight, tilting its wide brim against the blowing sand. From beneath it, he could see the gunslinger some thirty feet away. Now, he had his friend’s head cradled in one of his long hands and was pouring water down his throat. 

With Cuthbert’s hat on his own head, Jake caught his first glimpse of the man’s face. He looked just as he had imagined. Like the gunslinger, he was not young, but just what age he was was difficult to guess due to the damage to his skin from sun and wind and lack of water. He was not an old man, though; his hair was much more brown than gray. And, just has Jake had pictured, Cuthbert wore an eyepatch - like John Wayne in _True Grit_ , his mind uselessly supplied. 

Sometimes references like this popped into Jake’s head, but he never could remember what they meant. He could remember nothing from before he woke up in the desert, and there was little to remember from after: he drank, he ate, he pissed, he shat, he hid from the man in black. The gunslinger had caught him sleeping; he had asked for water, then for help, and Jake had followed him. He was glad, now. They had saved Cuthbert after all: Cuthbert with his brown hair and his smiles and his good intentions and his eyepatch like some movie star (and what was that?) whose face Jake failed to remember. Movie star? Jake felt his smile come back. He guessed that, in better days, Cuthbert might have been movie star handsome. 

“Nice hat.” Cuthbert had stopped drinking, and now he was looking at Jake with his eye part way open and sand in his eyelashes. That single eye was brown, also, of course. Jake had seen it before. He hurried to remove the hat, but Cuthbert croaked, “Keep it.” There was blood in the cracks of his lips when his smiled but none in his teeth, not like in Jake’s dream of the dream.

“Can you walk?” the gunslinger asked Cuthbert.

“Doubtful. I can scarce hold up my head.” He gave a sandy huff and let his head loll back in demonstration.

The gunslinger caught it before it struck the hillside. “We will carry you then. Drag you, if we must.”

“Oh, good.” Cuthbert gave a scratchy laugh.

“The night will be cold, and you need more care than I can give you here.”

“Say true. Shall I lie flat?” 

He slumped over to what Jake suspected might be intentionally comic effect, and Jake could not suppress a giggle. The gunslinger glowered at him as he reached his hands under his friend’s arms.

“Take his feet,” he ordered Jake. “We’ll carry him as far as we can manage.”

It was exhausting. Jake had lugged that heavy water bag how many miles there, and now, on top of that, it was a struggle to haul Cuthbert’s legs what felt like hours through the sand. As they trudged along, he watched the holsters that hid Cuthbert’s guns bounce up and down in tempo with their awkward pace. He doubted he had had a chance to clean them yet.

Cuthbert was a gunslinger, too, but for the other man, the first gunslinger he had met, Jake had no other name. He walked steadily ahead of Jake, backwards, bearing most of Cuthbert’s weight, their two packs, and all but one of the big water bags. Having walked all the way to Jake’s shelter just that morning, he must have been more exhausted even than Jake, but he stopped only when Jake’s strength gave out, and these breaks he spent carefully easing water down the throat of the dehydrated man.

Eventually, Cuthbert was able to walk, very slowly, if he leaned on the gunslinger’s shoulder. Having Cuthbert on his feet made the journey easier, but he was so weak and wobbly that their pace barely increased. Both gunslingers’ attention was focused on steering Cuthbert forward and keeping him upright, and Jake, who had sweated with the exertion of carrying his share of Cuthbert’s weight, shivered in the crisp cold of the desert night as he trailed along behind with the oversized hat pulled down over his ears.

Eager to prove that he could still be useful, he offered to carry Cuthbert’s pack, which he slung over his shoulder like a messenger bag. It was light, so Jake wasn’t contributing much by carrying it, and it was capable of holding much more than it did now. Rummaging furtively, he found a meager collection of shells for his guns, a little tinderbox, a scrap of fabric that probably used to be a shirt, two hard-as-rock strips of dessicated jerky, and a leather bundle that unfolded into a simple and unsafe looking grooming kit - small but long-nosed, pointy scissors, a fractured triangle of mirror, and an unsheathed straight razor. Whatever else he carried with him had been lost to the desert or was still attached to his underfed and gangly body: a pair of threadbare jeans, a shirt the color of the sand, his well worn boots, those two holstered guns, and a strange utility belt that held the Horn from the gunslinger’s dream, a little drawstring bag, a slingshot, and a long, sheathed dagger. That was it. He didn’t even have a hat anymore because he’d given it to Jake. Jake fingered the brim lovingly and felt himself take a second irreversible step toward a potentially deadly trap. The first had been when he decided to follow the gunslinger and make himself useful, but this step was far more precarious: they were beginning to make him feel special.


	2. Special

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say weekly? Oops. After a few days away and more revisions than initially intended, here is chapter 2 at last!

“How dare you?!” 

The gunslinger spoke softly, but Jake was rested after their exhausting walk. He was ready to wake up, and so the whisper floated clearly to his ears. Jake kept his eyes shut tight and listened.

When Cuthbert didn’t answer right away, the gunslinger continued: “This is twice in recent days you’ve acted without first consulting me. I will not have it.”

“You released me from my obligation,” Cuthbert murmured, just as softly. He sounded like a man trying to reason with a wild animal that might leap up and eat him if his voice edged higher than a certain pitch.

“That’s horseshit, and you know it, gunslinger.” A deep edge crept into the gunslinger’s - the first gunslinger’s - voice, ruining his whisper. “I spoke the words, but you did not act upon them. You cannot follow me for years and years and then pretend that, in your heart, you do not call me dinh. You cannot uphold and then unravel the sacred bond between us day to day as you see fit.”

“Shush.” The other man’s whisper was barely audible.

The gunslinger lowered his voice; Jake had to strain to hear him now. “Tull, I’ll grant you. I was over-content, reluctant. You acted to save us both and many more, perhaps.”

“I acted to save you in the desert, too.”

“You should have consulted me!”

“And would you not have been reluctant then as well? I spared you the decision.”

“It is your place to spare me nothing!” 

In the sudden silence, Jake could hear the sound of sand shifting outside, the sound of the old wooden walls turning to brittle stone in the hot sun. It was clear to Jake that Cuthbert disagreed.

The gunslinger spoke again. “If you must spare me anything, spare me your death.”

“Would you rather have ordered it?”

Another silence. 

“No,” the gunslinger replied at last. His voice was low but no longer a whisper.

“Roland.” Cuthbert raised his voice to match. At this volume, it still scratched from dehydration. “When I die, I will die for you. Maybe once I had no choice, for I was bred for such a role. But you changed that at Jericho Hill. You gave me my life, and you released me from my obligation. After that, I chose my path myself.”

“Cuthbert, son of Robert, I accept and understand your choice. Now, understand me this, and hear me very well: your actions and these words forfeit to me not just your life but your death, too. You will not die in such a way without consulting me. You will not . . . waste yourself unnecessarily.”

There was no answer.

A long moment passed, and Jake’s curiosity got the better of him. Cautiously, he opened one eye and saw the gunslinger, whom Cuthbert had called Roland, with his hand cupped under his friend’s chin. They were both sitting on the hardwood floor: Cuthbert, leaning back on both arms with his knees up, and Roland on his own knees leaning over him. From a distance, it would have looked like a tender pose, almost like Roland was about to kiss his friend (like Jake was certain he had done when he had left him at the bottom of the sandy hill), but Jake was only a few feet away, and he had heard their conversation, and he could see the hard anger and stern authority in Roland’s eyes. 

Cuthbert’s expression he could see less well. The angle was bad, and both gunslingers seemed to have noticed he was watching. By the time Cuthbert had turned his head to look at Jake, he was smiling a bright, friendly smile. 

Roland jerked his chin back roughly and forced his friend to look him in the eye. His voice was a hiss. “Do you hear me very well, gunslinger?”

Cuthbert’s smile did not seem to lessen. “Yes, I hear. I will not waste myself unnecessarily.”

Roland narrowed his eyes. 

“Alright?” Cuthbert prompted. “The boy is awake and watching. I reckon I ought to introduce myself and thank the lad by name. For saving my life. Roland, I have no wish to die.”

“Alright,” Roland grumbled. 

Now, he did kiss Cuthbert - rather roughly - on the forehead. Then, he released his chin, and both men turned to Jake.

“What is your name, boy?” Roland asked. 

“Jake. Jake Chambers.” His last name came off his tongue without his mind’s consent. His thoughts wallowed in jumbled darkness, and suddenly he was unsure. Was that his name? Or was it . . . “John? No, not John: Jake.” He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and tried to keep up a brave face.

The gunslingers exchanged a glance.

“Thank you for your assistance, Not John: Jake.” Cuthbert was the first to speak. He raised his left fist to his forehead, straightened his long legs, and, flourishing his right hand out behind him, bowed low over them until his forehead nearly touched his knees.

“You’re welcome.” Jake answered automatically. He giggled like he had when Cuthbert had slumped over in the sand, and this time Roland did not glare.

“How is it you are here?” Cuthbert went on. He folded his knees back up and scooted slightly closer.

Jake shrugged. 

Cuthbert seemed about to say something else, but Roland put his hand on his shoulder.

“My fool companion has a robust constitution, but he must rest a while longer ere we can depart. Come, show me the secrets of this place.” He rose and offered his hand to Jake and hauled him to his feet. 

Jake followed him towards a more cluttered portion of the little building and then stopped. In that horrible moment, Jake was suddenly certain that, behind him, Cuthbert was lying clammy, white, and bleeding on a bed of pale straw.

“Wake up!” the gunslinger would scream when he came back and found him there, unconscious. “I was certain last night you were doing better.” He had not hauled his second such a distance just to watch him pass away from lack of blood and fever.

Desperate, he would lug the limp weight of his injured body to the pump - no, not the pump, the well: the kind in a stone circle with a bucket like in . . . like in . . . had Jake seen a well like that? The gunslinger would bring up water from some source, and he would bathe his dying friend’s face with an icy splash. Maybe Cuthbert’s one eye would roll open for a moment, pupil shaking, long, dark lashes full of water. Well water, not tears. By then, Cuthbert would be too far gone to weep, but Roland . . .

“Drink!” the gunslinger commanded. 

Jake breathed in sharply and blinked. In front of him, the gunslinger, Roland, was not holding Cuthbert’s mouth open or slapping his cheek. He did not have two of his long fingers jammed against his friend’s pulse point while he held his neck upright. No, he was standing in that dim, hot, wooden shelter in the desert, pointing sternly at something behind Jake’s back.

Jake spun around. 

Cuthbert was sitting there, cross-legged now, sunburned but fully conscious, smirking. He lifted one of the water skins for Roland to see and emptied a long stream into his mouth. When he had drunk all he could manage, he laid down on his back and propped his bootheels three feet up the wall.

“Jake!” Roland called. 

After one more backwards glance at Cuthbert, who was not pale and clammy, was not bleeding from five or six wounds, was decades older now, Jake realized, Jake shook himself and hurried after Roland.

The gunslinger had drunk and almost crossed, but the desperation to chase and catch still drove him on, even as he waited for his partner to recover. Their waterskins they would fill up a final time before they travelled on, he said, so he and Jake spent the delay gathering all the food that Jake had found and ransacking the building Roland called the waystation for any other useful goods.

A dust encrusted oilcan they found in the pump room, and Jake offered to run it back to Cuthbert. “He might need it when he cleans his sandy guns from when he tumbled down the hill.”

Roland narrowed his eyes at him. “Good lad.”

When Jake returned, Roland was peering down into the cellar.

Jake shivered. A screaming wrongness wafted out of it like steaming death. 

“I was afraid to go down,” Jake admitted.

Roland nodded. Was he afraid, too? The gunslinger’s face was hard to read, but down he went. In the awful, waiting silence that followed, Jake was sure he heard a voice speaking to Roland, sure he heard somebody say, “the boy,” “the man in black,” and something about souls in pockets. When Roland climbed back up, however, his expression was no more or less grave than it usually was. He handed Jake an armload of canned food.

Together, they brought their haul back to Cuthbert, who was now slouched against the wall with one knee raised, examining the open, loaded chamber of one of his big revolvers. As they approached, he squinted up at Roland, snapped the chamber shut, and holstered the gun without looking. "What has befallen you this time?" Apparently, he understood the nuances of the gunslinger's expressions better than Jake did. 

“There was a speaking demon in the cellar,” Roland explained. “It warned me against travelling with both of you.”

“Will you leave one of us behind, then?” Cuthbert had his eyebrow raised. Jake wondered whether he was joking.

Roland shook his head. He tossed something into Cuthbert’s lap. It was a jawbone, Jake realized. The gunslinger must have torn it off whatever he found in the cellar.

Cuthbert held the thing in his left hand and ran the tip of his right index finger over its rounded teeth. It looked human. Jake shuddered. Cuthbert handed it back.

“What, no lecture?” Roland teased, tucking the bone away into his pocket.

Cuthbert smiled thinly. “Both good and ill can come of magic. I will save my voice.” 

Jake imagined a much younger Cuthbert kissing someone, burying his hands in yellow hair. It must have been a magic kiss. He thought of Sleeping Beauty trapped in a tower surrounded by thorns. There were lots of stories like that in his head, he realized. His mind added a load of gibberish: he had seen the re-release of the animated film; the younger Cuthbert he imagined vaguely resembled the prince - more than he looked like John Wayne, anyway, in spite of the eyepatch. He thought these things with certainty, but no real memories surfaced along with them: What was an animated film? Was Sleeping Beauty’s story real or made up? What did John Wayne look like? Were any of these things important, or was his mind just torturing him with irrelevant fluff like the brand of his underwear or the score in one of last week’s Yankees games? More nonsense. Jake clutched his head in frustration.

Roland touched his finger. “Tell me,” he commanded.

“There are only words and nothing,” Jake complained. “Sleeping Beauty, John Wayne, re-release, animated movie star.” He looked up into Roland’s eyes. “Nothing!” 

“I hear you very well. Now, look at this.” He sat down on the floor next to his friend and gestured for Jake to sit across from him. Then, he pulled a shell from one of his revolvers.

Jake glanced cautiously at Cuthbert, who gave a little, friendly smile and nodded. Encouraged, he looked more closely at the shiny shell. It floated over Roland’s knuckles like a star shooting across a moonless sky. Jake followed into darkness.

When his eyes blinked open once again, both men were looking at him, faces grim.

“You hypnotized me, didn’t you,” he accused. “Why don’t I know what happened now?”

Roland’s frown deepened.

Outwardly more tender hearted, Cuthbert leaned toward him, his single dark eye warm, concerned. “You asked not to remember,” he told Jake. “You came from another world where you died. We do not judge you for not wanting the memory.” He smiled reassuringly and placed his hand on top of Jake’s, curving his long fingers around Jake’s smaller, downturned palm. “You have moved on from that where and that when. This world has moved on from what it used to be. We will look after you as best we can.” 

And Jake could tell how much he wanted to take care of him in spite of how careful he was not to overpromise. He didn’t know this from his words (which said almost as much all by themselves); he felt it with a certainty that started simultaneously in the tips of his ears and the nape of his neck and echoed through his brain. He caught a brief a glimpse of himself, broken and bloody on the ground, strangely distorted as though he had only seen it second hand. Overlaid, a voice was speaking in a language Jake had never heard before but somehow understood: "The one in your belly would have done the job eventually, but this one made a faster end. You should be deader than me, gunslinger, and twice as rotten." Rot: he saw a regal city crumbling to ruin and neglect and felt a profound sense of homelessness and a deep gratitude that he was not alone. He saw a young man with a childlike face and knew that Cuthbert felt responsible for him. Then, the childlike young man was gone, and there was so much grief and doubt and disappointment in himself and there were tears falling from his eyes and he was about to scream his missing friend’s name out into the woods - he was responsible; he’d find him - but he didn’t because someone clapped a hand over his mouth. All this passed through Jake’s mind in the space of seconds, as vivid as the fantasy he had imagined of the gunslingers’ confrontation on the desert hill but much, much more intense.

Cuthbert’s expression changed. His gaze hardened, his jaw first clenched then relaxed slightly, and he cocked his head to one side as if the altered angle could really give his single eye a new perspective on the world. He kept holding Jake’s hand. Jake caught a flash of yellow hair again and then more blood and grief. At last, the flow of new impressions stopped. They were just two men and a boy in a dried out wooden building in the desert.

Cuthbert stopped looking at Jake and looked at Roland. With his right eye missing, he had to turn his whole head. “Roland?” 

Jake didn’t know him very well yet, but he thought his tone suggested that he might have something more to say.

Roland seemed to think so, too, because there was a long pause before he answered. 

“Yes. As best we can.”

***

By the time they left the waystation and journeyed onward towards the mountains, Jake was well and truly caught. The gunslinger had such an air of stern authority, and his friend, Cuthbert, had such an easy smile in spite of everything he had endured. Against his better judgment, Jake was flattered by their (dare he name it?) fatherly attention.

Before long, they had made it past the desert into the foothills of the mountains to the West. Here, there were grasses to sleep on and trees to sit under and springs to drink from and rabbits to eat. The gunslingers’ moods lifted, and so did Jake’s. 

Cuthbert used his terrifying shaving kit and peeled off an uneven crop of brown and gray bristles and a layer of dead, flaky skin.

Roland, roasting rabbit, shook his head. “I don’t know why you bother.”

Cuthbert laughed. “Because my beard is shit, Roland. You grow perfectly even stubble, and it just stays like that. Terminal length at a tooth’s width. My beard itches me. It grows more here than it does here. It looks like shit.”

“Oh, is that it? You are missing a chunk of your face, yet still the ladies call you handsome.”

“Vain, am I?”

“I like you vain,” Roland replied. “It reminds me of our youth. I know your looks do not come first.”

“What, second? Third?”

Roland laughed, and Cuthbert joined him. Jake laughed, too, but something turned deep in his belly. A voice inside his mind screamed that he shouldn’t get too comfortable. These men were dangerous, and the world they were in was worse . . . but it was harder and harder to listen. The feeling in his belly was equal parts nauseating and pleasurable, and it began to creep in both directions - down between his legs and up to his heart and into his throat and his head, making him muzzy. In a daze, he ate the rabbit Roland served and then collapsed in the soft grass, eager for sleep. When he rolled onto his stomach, he was surprised to find his penis hard and in the way. He rolled onto his side instead and slept a dreamless sleep.

He awoke somewhere else completely.

The land was damp and marshy, and droopy wetland trees overhung the mossy ground. The sick-pleasure feeling was stronger than ever, and it was pulling his whole body towards something he could see out of the corner of his eye - a circle of stones with a larger stone platform in the middle. He started towards the circle but found he could not move.

Roland knelt in front of him, his blue eyes narrow and his sharp face grim. He was saying Jake’s name.

Jake fought to reply, but it was a losing battle. His head was heavy, full of sticky bubbles, and he couldn’t decide whether to tell Roland to take him to the circle or to save him from it. His voice came out as one long, unintelligible moan.

“We’re too close here. He feels it still.” Cuthbert’s voice, behind him. That was why he could not move - Cuthbert was holding onto him.

“Not for long,” Roland murmured. He was rolling one of his revolver shells across his long fingers again.

Jake wanted to look back at the circle, but the glittering shell was mesmerizing, and soon it was all he could see. 

He awoke for a second time where he had first laid down beside their campfire. Cuthbert sat watching him, arms folded around his drawn up knees. His mouth was set in a thin line. Jake’s stomach hurt, and his groin was after something he couldn’t remember. He moaned. 

In an instant, Cuthbert was kneeling beside him, pressing something hard and jagged into his hand. Jake’s mind cleared. His nausea evaporated. His penis shrank down to its normal size. He realized what he was holding.

Jake dropped the creepy jawbone as quickly as he could and edged away from it.

Cuthbert chuckled softly, but his eye was still concerned. He retrieved the jawbone, tucked it in his belt, and squatted a few feet away from Jake, ready to spring. “Alright?” he asked.

Jake nodded.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“I’m alright.”

Cuthbert eyed him suspiciously for a moment longer and then sat cross legged facing Jake. “You tell me the instant you think you might not be.”

“Okay,” Jake agreed. “What happened? I felt sick and wanted . . . I just wanted.”

“I know. I felt it too, inside the circle. And I can feel it now a little bit because I know it’s there. Don’t!” He cried out suddenly. Jake jerked back in surprise. Cuthbert lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Don’t reach for it, or you’ll be holding bones again.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know of demons?”

“Monsters. Monsters don’t exist. Not magic ones; just people.” Someone from Before had told Jake this, he thought.

“Maybe not where you came from, but here . . . They are uncommon, say true, but in these places far from people or in places where the people used to be . . . Magic is all around us, Jake, and much of what I’ve seen in my time has been evil.”

“But not all.” Jake could recall Cuthbert’s cryptic comment after Roland emerged from the cellar. There had been a demon down there, too, he remembered now. “There was a demon in the cellar at the waystation. And here, there is a demon in the circle.” Jake slogged through his misty memory. “It put a spell on me?”

“It called to you. It called to all of us. It’s calling all the time - but, at first, only you could hear it.”

“Why?”

“Because you have a gi . . . a talent. Do you know what I am speaking of?”

“I can feel things. See things. I saw you and Roland on the hilltop when he realized you’d given him your water. I thought I had imagined it, but it was real, I’m sure now. I saw that when Roland and I were walking back to get you. And then, when we went off without you, I saw him trying to wake you up another time when you were hurt. You were younger, and your eye . . .” it had been hidden underneath a bloody bandage, Jake remembered now, not covered by a leather patch.

Cuthbert ran one finger along the edge of his eyepatch. “And?” he prompted.

“And I saw and felt inside your mind when you touched me in the waystation.”

Cuthbert nodded slowly. “I did not realize how far it went. Those other visions may have come to you from Roland or from ka, but sure I am that I touched you,” he held up his hand and wiggled his fingers, “and you touched me.” He tapped his temple just above his eyepatch. “We call it ‘the touch.’ Appropriate?” He smiled. “Roland has the barest glimpse of it, and I have it not at all, but you . . . ‘tis very strong in you, I think. The demon drew you to it before either of us realized it was there.”

“What does it want, the demon? Is it lonely?”

“Oh yes, I expect it is. What it would want from me or Roland is to . . . ease its loneliness.” Sex. He was talking about sex.

“You’re talking about sex,” Jake said.

“That’s right. It’s not uncommon. Well, as demons go.”

“It’s a succubus,” Jake said. Like so many words his mind brought forward anymore, he didn’t really know what that name meant, but it seemed right.

“Something like that.”

“Did it want sex from me?” Jake asked. Disturbing: he had felt it want him like that, he realized now. “I’m just a kid.”

“You’re not ‘just’ anything. It would have taken that from you, say true.” Cuthbert grimaced deeply then went on: “And it would have taken more besides because you have more to offer. There would have been very little of you left, I fear.”

“Where is Roland now?” Jaked asked, dread building in his stomach.

Cuthbert made a face. “Let us not speak on that.”

“He’s gone to see it, hasn’t he. He’s gone to give it what it wants because he thinks that it will tell him something in return.”

“Indeed he has. Well done.”

“You’re pissed at him.”

Cuthbert laughed fully now. “This time, I am. This time, he got a lecture.”

Jake felt himself smile. Then, he remembered something. “You said you don’t have the touch at all, but then you said that you can feel the demon now because you know it’s there, and you could tell when I was in your head. I’m sure you could.”

“That is because I know what it feels like from the other side. Aye, I know that feeling very well.” Cuthbert sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Once, we had a friend, Roland and I, who had the same ability as you. He and I were very close. I used to let him come inside my head and talk, and I helped him practice his control. Without control, he risked being overwhelmed by all the thoughts and emotions and echoes of the future and the past that he felt floating through the world.”

“The man with the childlike face? The one you felt responsible for and lost?”

“No,” said Cuthbert. He cocked his head and reconsidered. “He was a very strange young man. He came and found us when he should not have been able to. There was something about him as well, say true. He may have had such an ability, but he did not share it with us. Perhaps he did not understand how he was different or did not know how to describe what he could do. He is not who I was speaking of.”

“The man with the yellow hair.” This time Jake was certain.

“Yes, you have it. Can you tell me his name?”

It was like Cuthbert was holding it out for him to pick up off a serving platter. Jake picked it up and tasted it. “Alain.”

“Well done.”

“You gave it to me. That was easy.”

Cuthbert smiled and laughed, but he buried his face in his hands. 

Jake remembered the glimpse he’d had of the yellow haired man. There had been a lot of blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've referenced a couple of films in this story, and, after much deliberation, I've decided not to worry too much about whether Jake could actually have seen them. But, I did decide to write a note.
> 
> The film version of _True Grit_ starring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn came out in 1969, but cursory research has not revealed to me any re-release in the 1970s or any early TV broadcast dates. Jake, living in 1977, may have seen a poster or perhaps a book cover featuring an image from the film (cursory research does not confirm whether this existed either), but it's such a famous role that it seems plausible enough that Jake had seen at least the image of John Wayne in an eyepatch somewhere, or maybe he saw the film's sequel, _Rooster Cogburn_ (1975).
> 
> Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_ (1959) is also problematic. It was re-released in 1970, but Jake would have been only 4. When I started writing this, I mis-rememebred and thought that Jake came from 1971, which would have been perfect - but wrong. Oh well!


	3. A Lot of Blood

The longer Jake travelled with Roland and Cuthbert the fonder he grew and the stronger his premonition of impending doom became. He couldn’t shake the memory of when he heard Cuthbert agree that his own life and death were forfeit. That wasn't a theoretical situation, either; Cuthbert had been dying, willingly, for Roland’s sake when Jake had met them both, and every echoed memory Jake accidentally experienced through what Cuthbert had called the touch supported his conclusion: Roland might not want Cuthbert to die, but, if it came down to it . . . and who was Jake? A stranger. “As best we can,” they’d promised, but all their other friends were dead. Jake was walking through the wilds of a hard, nasty, adult world, so he thought of a hard, nasty, adult word to describe his situation: he was fucked.

Still, he followed Roland up the mountain. What else was he to do? He made good progress, too. Far from holding the two men back, Jake soon took the lead. His smaller body made it easier for him to scramble up the rocks as they left the lower meadows far behind and journeyed up the sheer stone cliffs above. Confidently, Jake crawled up the craggy mountainside, faltering only when the next handhold was far beyond his reach.

Light and delicately built for a man so tall, Cuthbert followed after Jake with ease. Better fed or twenty years younger, Jake guessed he would have climbed as well as Jake or better. He was certain the conjunction in his mind was or not and; Cuthbert was slight enough that his height did not keep him from being nimble. Roland’s did, though. He was very tall indeed, far too tall to have a natural aptitude for climbing, but he was sure footed and scaled the mountainside only slightly more slowly than his friend.

Their efficient pace filled Jake with dread. Twice, they saw the man in black, and Jake could once again feel Roland’s single minded determination to catch him. Now that he understood that the sensation was not in his imagination, the gunslinger’s desperation scared him all the more.

The first time, the man in black was high above them traversing a steep rock. I’ve almost got him; he will lead me to the Tower, Roland thought. Jake heard it perfectly as though he’d spoken it out loud. Roland had no capacity for restraint where this man was concerned.

The second time he was much closer, and he taunted them. His voice was oily, and his mind was blank. It was not closed and private, like the gunslingers usually kept theirs so that their thoughts did not spill out all over Jake now that they understood he had their so-called touch. Rather, the man in black’s mind was empty like it wasn’t there at all. He’s not a person, Jake thought, remembering what Cuthbert had said about demons, he’s something much, much worse.

“There you are, gunslinger!” The man in black called down at them. “I’m the gingerbread man, and you won’t catch me yet!”

Roland did not answer him, so he continued on.

“And look! Here is your Isaac! And pretty Bertie, too! What's left of him at any rate. Bertie, birdie, birdie, wanna cracker? Wanna fly into my engine and bring down my airplane? I don't think you'll get the chance to try, if I am honest, which I always am. I admit I didn't guess you'd make it this far, Pretty Birdie, but now I'm awfully glad you did. How much more fun! How awfully fun it's going to be! I'll see you on the other side. Well, one of you.” 

Roland fired from the hip, but his shots peppered the granite on either side of the man in black. 

The demon grinned and disappeared into the mountainside.

***

The man in black fled through the mountains, and the gunslinger followed. And Jake and Cuthbert, who was _a_ gunslinger, but not _the_ gunslinger, followed him. They followed him to the ledge where the man in black had stood and taunted them. They followed him into the belly of the mountain itself - an old railway tunnel that the light of day had never seen. They followed him in utter darkness until they stumbled upon a handcar. Cuthbert helped Roland pump it, flinging them uphill at breakneck speed towards some inevitable doom.

There were strange and terrifying things inside the tunnel, things that were even worse than dread and darkness. At one point, they came upon a subway station from a long lost society that seemed to have technology from beyond Jake’s wildest dreams. The lights were still on even though the skeletons that haunted the place turned to dust at just the slightest touch. And then there were the mutants - glowing, monstrous parodies of men, who were smart enough to try to crash their handcar. Jake and Cuthbert hurried to remove the rocks they’d placed upon the tracks while Roland shot the monsters, who came at them again and again and again. The crack of the revolvers in the cavern tore Jake’s eardrums into shreds and left him shaking, but Cuthbert never flinched.

Finally, Jake saw the light at the end of the tunnel. The silhouette of the man in black was blocking it.

“Good luck, boys!” His tease echoed across the chasm even as he disappeared.

The chasm. They’d stopped immediately when they’d seen it by the dim glimmer of the vague and distant daylight. The railroad tracks kept going, but the stone floor of the tunnel dropped away into a raging underground river too far down to see. Jake could see the trestle that ran over it, however, and he didn’t like the look of it one bit.

“We’re going to cross that?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Cross or go back and around or over. Which we should,” Cuthbert suggested.

“No,” Roland said sharply. “That could take days. Weeks. He is right there! I can catch him, Cuthbert!”

Cuthbert didn’t argue. Instead, he nodded and embraced his friend and kissed him on the cheek. Then he gestured grandly for Roland to precede him onto the rickety trestle. Jake broke out into a sweat, but Cuthbert’s arm was still outstretched, so Jake followed after Roland, and Cuthbert took the rear.

Amazingly, they made it almost to the end before it happened. Only a few steps from solid ground, Roland stepped on a faulty crossbar. It broke, but he reacted instantly and managed to stumble forward to the next tie and, from there, leap safely to the rocky surface on the far side of the gap. Jake was not so lucky. Roland’s leap shook the trestle, and the tracks broke off at Roland’s end. The whole thing yawned off to the side, and Jake slipped from his own precarious position, and he fell.

He caught the nearest crossbar with his sweaty hands and knew he would only be able to hold on for a moment. 

“Go, then!” he heard someone call.

Jake closed his eyes and felt his grip give out. He was oddly calm. What would happen when he hit the bottom? Go, then, he silently agreed, there are other worlds than these. At least one, anyway: a world Jake had lived and died in but could not remember. Maybe this death would send him back.

He held his breath.

He did not fall. Cuthbert’s long fingers curled bruisingly first around his left wrist, then around his right. Jake looked up to see him laid out on his stomach on the trestle, which continued to lean more and more. In a moment, it would dump them both off into the darkness. Jake’s acceptance of his certain death dissolved. He squeezed Cuthbert’s bony wrists as tightly as he could, and Cuthbert looped his feet around the tracks, jammed his knees against a crosstie he could only hope was solid, and pulled hard. Slowly, he peeled Jake up over the edge, and Jake felt ancient metal scrape against his stomach, groin, and thighs. He tucked up his knees and set them on the nearest bar, which held his weight. He wasn’t dead just yet.

“No time to catch our breath. Back! Back!” Cuthbert yelled. 

Jake watched him struggle to rise and turn around on the collapsing track without falling through the slats himself. Once he had succeeded, he retreated quickly back the way they had come, half crawling as he grasped the rails or crossbars with his hands in an attempt to keep a steady pace. There was nothing more that he could do for Jake but trust that he would follow.

Jake followed. With their weight and the much greater weight of the collapsing trestle slowly dragging the tracks down into the ravine, their progress back across became more and more like climbing a ladder. They were both good climbers, though, and fast. Even with crossbars missing here and there, it was much easier to climb the rails up with feet and hands than it had been to tiptoe across them flat. They’d make it handily as long as the tracks remained attached at the other end.

They did.

Cuthbert hauled himself onto the rocky ledge where they had left their handcar, and Jake scampered up at his heels. Side by side, they watched the remnants of the trestle bend, collapse, and tumble into the abyss. 

On the far side of the chasm, Roland's silhouette lingered just a moment in the doorway and was gone.

***

Cuthbert sat in silence for a long time.

Jake let him grieve; he wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at the unreachable light on the other side of the ravine and waited.

“Well, Jake,” Cuthbert said at last with artificial brightness, “what shall we do now?”

“Go back and go around or over.”

“Good lad.” He ruffled Jake’s hair as he rose.

The handcar sped even more swiftly on the downhill journey, and they passed the subway station and the mutants without incident.

It should have taken days for them to cross the mountains and climb down the other side, but when they emerged from the tunnel, the sun had still not set, and twilight came on very slowly. Night, when it finally overtook them, seemed to last forever.

“The world has moved on,” Cuthbert explained. He’d said those words before. “Sometimes, days and nights are not the length they ought to be.” He squeezed Jake’s shoulder and offered another of his friendly smiles, but then he squinted at the stars behind the black peak of the mountain ridge, and Jake could tell that he was worried.

In spite of the strange, unending darkness and the prickle of Cuthbert’s worry in the back part of his mind, Jake found that he enjoyed the journey. He had avoided what had seemed like an inevitable death, there was plenty of light from the moon and plenty water from mountain streams and patches of snow, and Cuthbert taught him to bring down night birds and fat marmots with the slingshot that he carried in his belt. Jake was very good at it, and Cuthbert told him he was proud. He let him keep the slingshot like he’d let him keep his hat.

The worst parts of the journey were the moments when they tried to rest. In the darkness, it was bitter cold above the timberline, and there was nothing there to burn. Even when Cuthbert selected the most sheltered places he could find and held Jake close against him, Jake still shivered so violently that he could hardly sleep. But, Cuthbert never rested them for long; he was as desperate to catch Roland as Roland had been to catch the man in black. 

When they finally crossed the rocky pass and started down the other side, pale daylight was beginning to encroach upon the eerily long night, but there was no spectacular view of the landscape yet to come; they were caught in the clouds, and it was snowing.

“Do you think he’ll wait for us?” Jake asked.

“He might, if he is still alive himself. Or he might not - he cannot know when we will come or if we will survive.”

“What will you do?”

“If he is not there I will follow if I can. If we should find him dead I will look after you.”

“You won’t take up his quest? Chase after the man in black?” Jake was in the lead, and he stopped and looked back up at Cuthbert.

Cuthbert shrugged and smiled a very little. “There is more to his quest than that. We’ll see. I have a duty to him and a duty to you. If he is dead, my duty to you takes precedence. But there may be nothing else to do - my duty to him and my duty to you may be one and the same.”

“Why do you have a duty to me?” 

“Because you are a child and because I saved your life. I am responsible for you now.”

“Like the man with the . . .”

“Yes,” Cuthbert interrupted, “like him. Having me look after you is not a guarantee of safety. I have not done so well before.”

“I’ll die if I am left alone.”

“That’s something.”

Jake started walking again. He could hear Cuthbert’s careful steps behind him. After a moment, he spoke again: “But Roland saved your life before. Doesn’t that make him responsible for you?”

Cuthbert laughed, and Jake looked back at him, although he was still walking. “It’s not the same. The opposite, in fact. I am his man. Be careful! Down is trickier than up.”

He was not wrong. Descending out of the cold came as a gift, but Jake was scraped up on his hands, elbows, and knees by the time they reached the bottom, and Cuthbert had fared only slightly better. Eventually, they climbed over the shoulder of a hill and, by the light of the new day, saw the place where they had almost been when their journey began: the other side of the tunnel. 

Cuthbert stopped here and surveyed the view. Close to the valley floor it was still desert but not quite as desolate as it had been on the other side. Here and there, crops of scrubby trees spring up next to bunches of tall, spindly grass, and their density seemed to increase as the valley sloped farther and farther away. In the far distance, Jake caught the glimpse of a shimmering, sparking line that might have been the ocean. Roland was nowhere to be seen.

Cuthbert heaved a heavy sigh, sat on the dusty ground, and patted the spot next to him. He wiped red dirt on his dilapidated jeans and fowned at where they were disintegrating at the knees. As he adjusted his position, the right leg finally split open, and his scuffed and knobbly knee poked through. He made a face at it.

Jake sat.

“Do you sense anything about this place?” asked Cuthbert.

“Do you?”

Cuthbert smiled at him. “Sharp lad. I do not like it. From our position here, I cannot trace where Roland and the man and black came down out of the mountain. The wind has blown loose soil across any obvious tracks. If I move closer, I may be able to track them.” He pointed forward. “Very far away, still far below, I see the sea. I can smell it on the sand - the sea and dried and ancient death, which is not unusual in such a place. The sound of sea has blended with the wind. It makes it difficult to hear what else may lie in wait for us. And yet, in spite of the wind, there is a stillness that I do not like. I do not think that Roland has moved on, but this is worry and conjecture. I have nothing but the normal senses.” He brushed his palm across his face in demonstration, and a spot of red dirt caught on the end of his nose.

Most of what Jake sensed was similar. He knew his observational skills weren’t quite as keen - not yet, but if Cuthbert kept teaching him, and Roland, if they found him . . . Oddly enough, the spot of red on Cuthbert’s nose bothered him more than any other feeling. “You’ve got . . .” he pointed. 

Cuthbert laughed and rubbed the dirt away, but it didn’t ease Jake’s mind. 

“Well?” Cuthbert prompted.

“I have a sinking feeling in my tummy. I don’t like it, either.”

“Is it connected to anything specific?”

“No,” Jake lied. He narrowed his eyes at Cuthbert’s face, then looked out over the valley. The throbbing ache inside him was almost a visible thing stemming from Cuthbert and trailing like a rolling pebble down the hillside to a place behind a clump of house sized boulders that had tumbled off the peak. He had neither the skill nor the desire to determine what was lurking there. He combed his hair back with his fingers and let the breeze that swept up off the distant sea cool his feverish forehead. “I feel sick. It’s there.” He pointed at the rocks.

“Behind the boulders? What?”

Jake shook his head and shrugged.

Cuthbert looked at him for a long time. Then, he felt his forehead with the back of his hand and cupped his cheek with his palm. He kissed him on the temple. “Wait here, and do not make a sound.”

Jake felt like the world was holding its breath.

Cuthbert ducked under the strap of his pack and stood up to his full height, leaving the little leather bag on the ground. It had more food in it than it had had before. He left his water skin there, too, caressed the butts of both his guns, and headed down the hill with nothing but his weapons. His footsteps on the sandstone and soft dirt did not make any noise. When he reached the bottom of the hill, Cuthbert drew his guns. With one in each hand, he stalked, silent, catlike, toward the boulders and the hidden hollow just beyond.

As he watched the slender figure creep across the wash, Jake began to see something else superimposed. Somehow, it was ahead of rather than on top of what his eyes could see: a splash of blood spattered on Cuthbert’s nose. He couldn’t tell whether it would be his or someone else’s, and he didn’t know which thought bothered him more. 

Cuthbert stepped into a gap between the giant rocks. For a moment, his slim silhouette showed in between the boulders like a stick figure waiting at the entrance of a lumpy house. Then, it disappeared, and two revolvers fired.

***

Cuthbert didn't come back. Fortunately, neither did the sickly, throbbing fever. Whatever grisly climax had been hiding behind the giant rocks was over, and all Jake was left with now was ordinary dread. Eventually, his fear of being left alone became enough to conquer his fear of what he might find, and he picked up the pack and the water skin and trudged on down the hill.

When he reached the hollow, it was clear at once that Cuthbert was the only one moving. Roland was slumped near the remains of a campfire - the kind that burned and left a fancy pattern like the man in black always made and Jake's gunslingers never bothered with. Cuthbert, especially, had seemed to take delight in smothering the man in black's remainders into ordinary ash whenever they should pass them by. Roland had enjoyed building his fires on top of them, which brought the same result. This time, however, Cuthbert had not destroyed the campfire pattern. He hadn't had time, yet; he had been too busy destroying the man in black. There he lay, flat on the ground, with Cuthbert, kneeling over him, intent on slowly cutting off his head.

Jake must have made a sound because Cuthbert looked up. There was a sadness in his one remaining eye, but, it in the touch, Jake also felt his satisfaction. A red blood spatter spread across his pale shirt, and there were splotches drying on his neck and nose.

Jake fought back a wave a revulsion. In his bravest voice he asked, “Is he dead?”

“I cannot be certain.” Cuthbert went back to his gruesome task.

Anger beat away Jake’s fear and nausea. “You haven’t even checked yet, have you?!”

Cuthbert did not look up. “If you are referring to the man in black, I am doing my best to ensure he is dead. ‘Tis a losing battle, I do reckon, but one does what one must. Although he could change his face, I believe whatever he is lived a long time in this body. With luck, we will have passed out of his reach before he finds another one to suit him. With better luck, this is the end of him. If you refer to Roland, no, I have not ‘checked yet.’ Be he dead, then I will weep for him. If he lives, like as not I will need all my concentration to revive his consciousness. This first.” At last, he met Jake’s eyes again. “You need not wait here, but do not wander far, and be back before dark. I reckon this place too barren for bears or wolves, but like as not there may be cats about. If there is trouble, keep that slingshot ready, and do not be not too proud to scream.” He sighed. “I am not keen for you to witness this, but, if you choose to stay, then you may ‘check.’” He jerked his head toward Roland.

Jake tried to swallow, but his throat felt like it had filled up with sand. He took a long drink from the water skin and skirted slowly round the edges of the hollow until he could kneel beside Roland. There wasn’t any blood on him. Jake felt his pulse.

“He isn’t dead!”

“Say thankya. Good.”

Cuthbert finally pulled the man in black’s head free of his body. It dripped blood onto the ground and onto Cuthbert’s already bloodsoaked jeans. He tossed it onto an existing pile of bones that had collected in the place, then dragged his body there as well.

“I hoped you would not see that,” he admitted.

Jake was not feeling forgiving. “You hoped?” he sneered. Now that he'd had a little time to think, Jake guessed that, had the man in black known he was there, Cuthbert would not have been able to hit him. He would have missed him, just like Roland had when he had tried to shoot him off the ledge. The man in black had not been human, but Cuthbert had sneaked up on him and shot him in the back. If he concentrated, Jake could even see it happen. If he stopped sneering, he might actually throw up.

“A foolish hope is a hope nonetheless," Cuthbert replied. "I might also hope to burn this body, but I do not think that I can build a fire hot enough, not here with so little to burn.”

“Poor you,” Jake goaded.

Cuthbert smirked. It was not a pleasant expression. “Why do you not speak your mind?” 

Jake couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “You want that? Here’s what I think: You let him walk around with your soul in his pocket because you don’t know any better, and then you do awful things behind his back because you think you’re helping him. It’s sick.”

“Grand words for a little boy who can’t remember where he came from.”

The blow struck home, but Jake was still angry. “I remember things sometimes. Right now I remember that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I think you would burn the world if you thought that it would save him from himself!”

The smirk was gone. “I hope you are wrong. We have such a saying in this world, too.”

Jake bit the inside of his cheek. “You’ve got . . .” he pointed up at Cuthbert’s face and touched his other hand to his own nose.

The world went cold. Jake’s final shot had hit its mark, but it had ricocheted back and hit him, too, and now he had to contend with Cuthbert’s unpleasant emotions as well as his own. Apparently, that particular retaliation had been unintentional; Jake caught a flash of rueful realization before Cuthbert composed himself, and the flow of emotions stopped.

“I’ll go see to that, shall I?” Cuthbert’s voice was as cold as the feeling inside him had been. He kicked some dirt up to cover the man in black’s blood on the ground. “Do not wander far.”

Jake watched him slip through a barely man-sized gap between the rocks and sat with his knees up to his chin, wondering whether crying would make him feel better or worse.

***

When Cuthbert returned he was naked except for his boots and his guns and utility belt. His wet clothes were slung over one arm, and he had a scrawny bundle of sticks and dry grass tucked under the other. He draped his clothes over a tall jut of rock and dumped the sticks and grass on top of the remains of the man in black’s fire. From his pack, he removed his tinderbox, and, eventually, he was able to kindle a fire. As it grew dark, he and Jake stared into it instead of looking at each other. Roland did not wake.

After a while, Cuthbert put his shirt on. Whatever scrubbing he had given it in the nearby stream had faded the dark red spatter into a mishmash of other immovable stains, but blood had dyed the whole thing pink. His jeans seemed to have come cleaner, but Cuthbert didn't put them on. Half dressed, he plopped his bare bottom on a little lump of rock, turned his pants inside out, and folded them over his thighs. He pulled the raggy wad of fabric out of his pack and began to unravel a thread from its badly frayed edge. Once he had a nice, long string, he got out his shaving kit, used the scissors there to cut a large square of somewhat less shabby material from the sad old bit of shirt, and threaded a needle Jake had failed to notice pierced into a fold of leather. He was halfway through sewing the patch onto the ripped knee of his jeans before he spoke.

“I have killed many people, Jake. Sometimes, I make a choice, and other times no choice is given me.” He did not tell Jake whether he thought he had made a choice today, and Jake did not ask him. “Every gunslinger carries a burden of blood. I do my best to make his lighter. Perhaps that is my folly - one of many. Love and forgiveness are not always bedfellows. The burden you carry, however . . . I was not playing at semantics when I stopped myself from calling it a gift.”

Jake chewed a little on his lip. He didn’t follow all of Cuthbert’s flowery words, but he understood the gist. “I know. Your friend, what was he like?”

“Alain?” Cuthbert heaved a weary sigh. “He was a good man.”

“That's all you're going to tell me? When you touched me in the waystation, you thought of him, and I saw blood. Tell me about that.”

Cuthbert's lips stretched into the thinnest smile. “Why, we shot him, Roland and I, and another friend we had then, who did not survive much longer.”

“Jamie,” Jake pulled from his reminiscing mind.

“Aye, Jamie. Roland had sent Alain to do reconnaissance. You know the word?”

Jake shook his head.

“To find out more about the enemy. His power was much stronger in proximity.”

“He went to use his touch to spy on them.”

“That’s right. The enemy sent spies as well - two men - we shot them down, but Al, he arrived on their heels. It might be he shot one of the intruders himself, and that is why he did not give the signal, or it might be that he gave it, but instinct and bloodlust wiped that detail from our perception. Whatever the reason, the three of us mistook him for the enemy . . . Roland would call it ka.”

“Like fate.” Jake guessed, rifling again through the more open part of Cuthbert’s mind.

“Something like, yes.”

“What do you call it?”

Cuthbert shrugged. “I take responsibility for my mistake. And so does Roland, mind you, but our philosophies are not the same.”

Jake made no comment. Roland had left them both for dead inside the tunnel.

Cuthbert's expression was distant and wistful. “I held him, dying, in my arms, and he asked me to smile. I tried, but I am sure it made a poor result, for I remember weeping. Far down the hill, the enemy began to muster. Horns were blown, and footsteps hammered towards us. With his last strength, Alain pulled my face down and whispered as blood bubbled from his lips: ‘Go then, there are other worlds than these.’”

Jake shivered. Hadn't he thought those very words just before Cuthbert pulled him up when he had been so sure he was about to fall? Cautiously, he asked, “What do you think he meant?”

“Oh, dear Alain could be well cryptic when it suited him. I used to wonder just how much it was he hid to protect Roland and me from what he saw and felt. It pained me then and pains me still to think what terrors he bore on his own.” He sighed again, his sewing finished or forgotten. “Since we met you, I have been questioning the meaning of his words. The myth of other worlds was told to us, and there always was the possibility Alain knew things beyond our speculation. I had liked to think he meant that we would meet again in the Clearing at the End of the Path, but . . .” he trailed off.

Cuthbert was kissing someone. Young and handsome, he was burying his hands in yellow hair. 

“You were in love with him!” Jake's exclamation came out half surprised and half accusing. The truth of it was so very obvious now.

Cuthbert's lips quirked to one side. “Do you say so?”

“You were!”

“And what say you to that idea? Which part of me disturbs you more?”

Jake hadn’t heard of men being in love with other men. In its strangeness, that notion was a tad uncomfortable, but it was humanizing, too, unless . . . “Would you have burned the world for him, the way you would for Roland?”

“I love Roland, but I am not in love with him. I do not plan to burn the world.” 

Cuthbert folded his needle and scissors back into his shaving kit and stuffed the kit and the dregs of his old shirt into his pack. He turned his patched jeans right side out and put them on, rearranging the guns and the dagger and horn in his utility belt on top of them. He tucked in his pink shirt.

Jake glanced at the corpse of the man in black - already, it had almost fully decomposed. By morning, it would be indistinguishable from the rest of the pile of bones. He had seen such a thing before in movies, his unhelpful mind supplied. Again, there was no real memory attached.

“Monsters,” he murmured.

“Care to elaborate?” Cuthbert seemed to think that Jake was talking about him. Was he?

“I can't really remember from before, but there are feelings. Maybe it's the touch?”

“More than maybe.”

“Right. You scare me, and he scares me, too. He loves people to death, and you murder to save them. Wildcard.” 

“Like Watch Me.”

This reference meant even less to Jake as the words he spoke that came as fragments from his world. He went on: “Anyway, you scare me, but that bothers you; you care.”

“And Roland?”

“He's more single minded, but I'm sure I've felt it underneath that he cares, too. Before, I’m sure there were a lot more people, but I think I was always alone.”

He saw a regal city crumbling to ruin and neglect. He saw Cuthbert, young and handsome, reaching out towards a man with yellow hair, who, back turned, watched the city’s silhouette become a smoky blur. Cuthbert, in his early teens, on horseback, reached down to take a folded paper from the man - then, the boy - with the childlike face. Cuthbert, in his eyepatch but years younger than he was today, waited at the top of a hill. Roland was coming up the road, and Cuthbert reached . . . 

Under the mountain, Cuthbert reached to grab Jake’s wrists. The underground river roared. The metal of the broken trestle squealed and screamed. 

A cricket chirped.

Cuthbert was reaching for him now. He had scooted to the edge of his rock and leaned low over his knees. Firelight danced on his bony wrist and long, slim fingers, and, in the dim orange glow, Jake could no longer see that his shirt was stained pink. He still knew it was, of course, and he knew where the color had come from, but he took the offered hand. 

No further memories flowed into Jake; for just a moment, he took comfort in an ordinary touch.


	4. Touch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters this week! Almost done!

The next morning, Cuthbert was fed up with waiting. Jake awoke from a surprisingly refreshing sleep to find his dubious protector - the cutthroat second gunslinger - his friend - still curled sweetly into the unconscious Roland’s side with his head lying on his chest. His single eye was open, though, and, after a moment, he lifted his ear from Roland’s heart and felt his pulse instead. He touched his forehead, too, then pried his eyelids open and squinted at his unresponsive eyes.

“This is not natural,” he said. 

Jake had slept well enough, exhausted by the strenuous journey and comforted - a little bit - by Cuthbert’s earnest statement that he did not plan to burn the world, but ‘Good morning,’ didn’t spring to his lips, either. 

“ _He_ wasn’t natural,” Jake said instead, “the man in black. He felt all wrong and empty. I didn’t like you killing him, especially not how you did, but I’m not sorry he’s dead. What are you going to do?”

Cuthbert sat back on his haunches and studied Jake’s face with his one eye. “Would you say, Jake, we have come to terms? Were you satisfied with last night’s palaver?”

Jake had to pick the meaning of Cuthbert's archaic terminology from the surface of his semi-open brain. To Jake's surprise, his foremost thoughts and emotions were all there for Jake to touch at will. He was extending his mind as a peace offering - like he had extended his hand the night before.

“I guess.”

Cuthbert was unconvinced. “Do I frighten you still?”

“Yes.”

Cuthbert sighed. He picked up Roland’s limp hand and watched his dainty thumb depress the prominent veins on its back.

“But, you didn’t let me fall," Jake added. "You’re on my side, aren’t you?”

“I have a duty to you, yes,” Cuthbert agreed. He didn't look away from Roland’s hand.

“I mean, I’d be a lot more scared if you were out to get me. How things are, I guess you’re my best friend.”

“Gods, don’t say that!” But, when Cuthbert looked up, he was smiling - wryly.

Alain had told him something similar, Jake realized. He concentrated and was able to block out Cuthbert’s memory before it claimed his mind. 

Jake smiled proudly. “Thanks, but you can keep that one all to yourself. You loved him. That stuff’s private.”

Cuthbert cocked his head at him. “My memory - it began to come to you as a vision because my mind is open, but you blocked it out because 'that stuff is private?'”

Jake nodded. His smile faltered briefly until Cuthbert grinned.

“Well done! Indeed, I am greatly heartened by your strength. It gives me hope. The two of us have come to terms, and I do have a plan." Now that the conflict between them seemed to be resolved, he plunged ahead, eye sparkling. "I mentioned Roland has a little of the touch. He has just enough to make him more susceptible to magic. This happened once before, but there was an object then - a ball.”

“A crystal ball? Like witches have, or gypsies?” Still, these meaningless associations kept popping unbidden into Jake’s head.

Cuthbert nodded. “Gypsies I know not, but it was a witch’s crystal ball. I threatened it with my gun, and it gave him back.”

“You killed the man in black,” Jake reminded him. In the light of day, Cuthbert’s pink shirt stood as a glaring reminder, but the thought of it no longer made Jake queasy.

“As much as he can be killed, and I am not regretting my decision. He was or is a sorcerer, and they are rare and dangerous. All the same, he is no longer here for me to threaten. I must bring Roland's mind back in a different way, and you must help me do it.” He held out the hand that was not holding Roland’s.

The thrill of being needed, not a burden, set Jake’s heart racing, but he had only just begun to understand how to control the touch. “I don’t know how.”

Cuthbert did not lower his hand. “You do inside,” he encouraged. “You will touch me again, first, just as you did in the waystation. Then, you will bring my mind with you when you try touching him. The first part will not be difficult because I am willing, and I have done this before. The second part . . . well, we shall see. You should be able to use my mind to help.” 

Cuthbert’s long, lean hand looked delicate, but, like much about him, its appearance was deceptive. When Jake finally took hold of it, his grip was very firm. 

“You used to do this with Alain.” 

“We did things like this, yes.”

Jake closed his eyes and cleared away the blockage he had built to keep out Cuthbert’s memory. He took a deep breath. Concentrated. Here was his mind; here was his body, which his mind controlled. At the point where they were physically touching, Cuthbert’s mind was waiting. 

As vivid as the vision of the gunslinger atop the sandy hill, as vivid as the real present world, an image formed of Cuthbert leaning over his own knees the night before, offering Jake his hand. Jake felt his own reluctance in that moment to take hold of it. The vision changed. Now, they were in the railway tunnel deep inside the mountain. The underground river roared. The metal of the broken trestle squealed and screamed. Cuthbert reached to grab Jake’s wrists, and Jake, about to fall, seized Cuthbert’s bony wrists in turn. Slowly, Cuthbert peeled Jake up over the edge and into his mind.

Panic swarmed Jake’s consciousness. A thread of terror had been hanging from that memory; although, exactly whose emotion it had been was difficult to tell, but relief was in there, too. Slowly, Jake’s heart rate slowed. He took a deep breath. They were not under the mountain anymore but in a sunny castle courtyard. Cuthbert looked more or less as he had in Jake’s previous vision, but he was better groomed and better dressed in a more antiquated style. Now, he was wearing dark brown slacks and a matching vest, and his shirt was neither stained nor pink. He looked a little sheepish, and the accompanying emotion swept through Jake so swiftly that he blushed himself until he managed to construct a new barrier between his mind and the mind he had fit his own inside.

Cuthbert seemed to understand when Jake was ready to communicate again. “I cry your pardon,” he said softly. “It has been some time, and such a thing is easiest for me when I can use a memory where I reach out my hand.”

“You tried the nicer one first,” Jake allowed.

Cuthbert raised his eyebrow. “Was it?”

Was it nicer? They had come to terms. Jake forged ahead:

“What do we do now?”

“Now, you will go back to your own mind take me with you.” Cuthbert’s image reached out his hand again to Jake.

“Is this where you grew up?” 

“‘Tis something like.”

Jake couldn’t remember anything from Before, but he kept thinking this was like a child’s fantasy - a good one. Cuthbert was standing there, smiling, like Old West Robin Hood. Jake shooed away his subconscious’ nonsense associations and mustered up his own smile as he grabbed Cuthbert’s hand.

“Next time - if there is a next time - you can use this memory instead.”

Again, Cuthbert's grip was firm, his smile sweet and encouraging. “Now, use your mind, your touch, and pull.”

Jake did. At first, he only pulled on the image of Cuthbert in his head, but, just as Cuthbert seemed to take a physical step forward, Jake opened his eyes in a rush. 

He was still sitting in the hollow with the dead fire and the dead, dry bones and Roland’s comatose body, only now Cuthbert was unconscious, too, slumped limply against Roland’s shoulder.

“Cuthbert?” Jake whispered. Part of him was glad both gunslingers were out too deep to hear how his voice shook.

There was no answer. 

Jake shuddered at the feeling of death all around. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked for Cuthbert’s consciousness inside his head. When he found it, it was so obvious he wondered how he could have missed it there before.

“Well done!” Cuthbert applauded from somewhere behind his ear. “This time, when you open your eyes, remember I am with you and reach out to Roland’s mind. You will want to take his hand. When the time comes, I will help you push.”

Jake opened his eyes again. This time, he could easily feel Cuthbert’s consciousness, self contained and separate from Jake’s. However, when he tried to pull it with him it came easily, and he felt his connection to the touch grow stronger. He picked up the gunslinger’s hand from where it had fallen from Cuthbert’s grasp when he passed out, reached out with his amplified consciousness, pushed into Roland’s brain, and pulled Cuthbert in after him. In the end, the entire process was no more difficult than opening a gate with a sticky latch and ushering someone inside.

***

Roland did not notice them at first. Inside his mind, he was seated on a rock, staring out into space - outer space. Stars and galaxies sparkled and swirled; nebulae glowed in eerie colors against the darkest black. Jake knew the names of all these things the way he knew the names for earth and sky and sand, but he couldn’t remember how he'd learned them and was certain he had never seen them vividly like this - not even Before. Jake and Cuthbert seemed to be standing on a surface of dark, craggy, porous rock - volcanic rock, Jake’s mind supplied - which floated through the wonders of space. Roland’s seat was at the far edge where he could look out over the endless drop.

Even though the situation was imaginary, Cuthbert’s imaginary grip on Jake’s imaginary hand felt somehow painfully tight. Jake squirmed, and Cuthbert let go of his hand, then clenched his fingers into a white knuckled fist. When Jake looked up at him, he wasn’t looking back at Jake; he was looking out at the cosmos, and Jake could see fear in his eye. He could feel his fear as well: fear and incomprehension were so overwhelming that the sensation was as painful as the grip on his hand had been. More painful - and it was getting worse.

Jake found the sight awesome and intimidating, but he knew what he was looking at. Cuthbert did not - he had lived much longer and seen many horrible, wonderful things, but he knew nothing about outer space, not even second hand. Had he even been taught what the stars really were? The huge distances involved? Did his people understand that the Earth went around the sun? Was that even the way it worked in Cuthbert’s universe? That one night had been so long . . . This vision of the cosmos was beyond Cuthbert’s comprehension, and it was breaking his mind. Jake had the upper hand at last. He shook off Cuthbert’s crippling bewilderment. This time, no one was going to die.

“It’s space,” Jake stated. 

Cuthbert looked at him very suddenly. The swirling, glowing objects in the sky reflected off his one, brown iris. “Space?” he whispered.

“Outer space. Like where the moon is, and the sun - the solar system and the galaxy and everything.”

“Everything,” Cuthbert echoed. He stood and stared. 

Jake felt his admittedly inadequate explanation begin to filter into Cuthbert’s mind. His sense of reason reemerged, tried once again to comprehend the sight, and faltered, slipping towards insanity. On the brink, he took hold not of the explanation Jake had offered but the fact that he had had one. His mind seized that notion like a lifeline and hauled its way back to the present. 

Cuthbert looked down at Jake and smiled that wry smile he had. He put the swirling lights and the words Jake had used to describe them into a part of his mind Jake couldn’t see and said again, “Well done. Someday, perhaps you can help me understand.”

“I’d like to try - if we can make it out of here. Come on!” Jake pulled on Cuthbert’s hand again and tugged him on towards Roland. “Watch your step.”

Cuthbert wasn’t an idiot. He had forced himself not to think about what he had seen in the sky, and, as they crossed the rough, black rock, Jake could feel his continuing effort not to look at it again. When they reached Roland, Cuthbert let go of Jake’s hand, knelt in front of the gunslinger, and focused intently on his face. 

Roland didn’t seem to notice him, but Jake sensed none of the terrified incomprehension that had nearly broken Cuthbert’s sanity. Roland was mesmerized, but was he overwhelmed?

“He isn’t broken,” Jake stated with growing confidence.

Cuthbert’s voice was a mere murmur: “He is difficult to break.” His one eye wandered over Roland’s face. “He always claimed that he had no imagination. No curiosity or sense of wonder, either. Perhaps he can simply accept . . .” he trailed off. 

Jake was startled when he spoke again - a sharp command:

“Roland, it is time to come back!” 

Roland tore his gaze from the cosmos and looked at his old friend. His pale eyes were wide and dreamy. He blinked twice at Cuthbert; then he smiled.

“It is nice to see you, Bert.”

Cuthbert exhaled a laugh of relief and smiled back. “Say thankya. It is nice to see you, too. I hoped but did not dare assume that you and I would meet again.”

Roland nodded and stroked Cuthbert’s face. “This is not real,” he said eventually.

“No,” Cuthbert agreed, “‘tis nothing like. Come back with me.”

Roland shook his head. “I may still reach the Tower. I am not ready to come with you yet.”

Cuthbert frowned. “What are you doing here, then?”

“I had palaver with the man in black. He showed me things. The Tower. This. The Tower is a part of this - a nexus, everything. It is my destiny. I will not give up my quest.”

“Wake up, then, Roland, and continue on. This is all in your mind.”

Roland ran his fingers up the right side of Cuthbert’s face and shook his head again. “This is not how I would remember you.”

“Oh no? Change me, then. This is your dream.”

Roland covered Cuthbert’s eyepatch with his palm and closed his eyes. For a brief moment, the swirling stars flickered out, and Jake saw something else in the awesome blackness of the sky. First, he saw himself falling into the chasm inside the mountain - falling to his death. Then, he saw a much, much younger Cuthbert drenched in blood as he had been the night before. This time, the blood was his. He lay on his back on the sky, looking down at Jake and his oblivious companions with his single bright, brown eye. His right eye was still there, dangling limply from the gory remains of its obliterated socket. He smiled, maybe even laughed, and blood burbled out of his mouth and down his chin. His intact eye blinked once, then went on staring lifelessly at Jake until a galaxy erupted from its center, and the psychedelic expanse of outer space returned.

Jake looked back at the two gunslingers just in time to see Roland pull the eyepatch off of Cuthbert’s face. He winced in anticipation, his vision of these deaths that not happened burned into his mind. You should be deader than me, gunslinger, he thought, and twice as rotten.

Cuthbert changed. The grey disappeared from his hair. The wrinkles disappeared from his face. The stubble disappeared from his cheeks. He blinked at Roland with two eyes and looked down at his own hands, just mature enough that they retained their adult size and shape. “Ro . . .” he murmured. His voice sounded younger, too, clearer, but even in that single syllable there was a warning edge.

“Before love and loyalty to me had destroyed anyone,” Roland explained.

Cuthbert rolled his eyes. He looked only a few years older than Jake and was as pretty as a girl. “I suppose I cannot fault you for harkening back to a more innocent time. Change yourself to match, then.”

“I cannot.”

“Fine,” huffed Cuthbert. “In that case, I charge you: grow me up again.”

Roland frowned, but Cuthbert did grow up. His chest filled out, and the hairs on his wrists grew more prominent. His cheeks became more hollow, his cheekbones more pronounced. The beginnings of laugh lines crinkled at the edges of his eyes. 

He touched his own face, found two eyes there, and commanded, “All the way.”

Tears poured down Roland's cheeks. Cuthbert did not get any older, but bloody wounds began to form all over his body. His right eye fell out and hung against his cheek. The socket it belonged in cracked apart and bled.

Cuthbert reached up and grabbed the dangling eye. Mercilessly, he yanked it from his face and tossed it away. He held out his palm as though he wanted Roland to stop, but then he said, “Keep going.”

“What?” Roland whispered. His voice cracked.

Cuthbert wiped his bloody face on his sleeve. He covered his broken eye socket with his hand.

Roland swallowed. “Is it true?”

“You remember, Roland. Grow me up.”

The blood disappeared from Cuthbert's face and clothes. His eyepatch rematerialized underneath his hand. His features became sharper still as grey hairs sprung up amongst the brown, first at the temple closest to his missing eye, then here and there all over, sparkling beacons in a sea of dark. Wrinkles deepened at the side of his left eye, around his mouth, and on his forehead. 

Cuthbert smiled. “There, you see?”

Roland embraced him.

“You are an exceptional fellow,” Cuthbert said. “You saw this, and you kept your mind. I . . . I did not have that in me. Without Jake . . .”

Roland's eyes lighted on Jake for the first time. He looked like he might cry again.

Cuthbert continued: “Now, all you need to do is wake up, and we will carry on towards the Tower.”

“I hear you very well,” Roland agreed, “but how?”

“This is your dream,” Cuthbert repeated.

In a story Jake could not really remember, Sleeping Beauty was trapped in a tower surrounded by thorns. Jake had not seen that, but he had seen a regal city crumbling to ruin and neglect. “I love Roland, but I am not in love with him,” Cuthbert had said. “I do not plan to burn the world.” Jake had seen Cuthbert, young and handsome, reaching out towards a man with yellow hair, who, back turned, watched the city’s silhouette become a smoky blur. They grew up in a city with high walls . . . a fragment of another story came to him: Once there was a Captain who so loved his Lieutenant that he stopped the hand of death and plucked him from his grave. They grew up in a city with high walls . . . Cuthbert was kissing someone. Young and handsome, he was burying his hands in yellow hair. “You should be deader than me, gunslinger.” They grew up in a city with high walls, and their love was steady even as the world moved on. The right words came to him:

“What about true love’s kiss? That always works in stories. I don’t remember how the stories go, but I’m sure it will work.” He turned to Cuthbert. “You love him. You said so.”

Cuthbert smiled. “Roland and I are both fond of stories, and, perhaps, when we were boys younger than you, our nursemaids told us some of those that you cannot remember. What say you, gunslinger? Can you believe in true love’s kiss? I have heard tell our love is true, but I - I am too close to it to know.”

“I remember such stories, but I never believed them. Our story I do know, however. And I know there can be power in a kiss.” 

On the distant horizon behind Roland’s head, Jake saw a beautiful girl dance across the sky, a river of long, yellow hair trailing behind her. Sweet sixteen, he thought. The girl caught fire. By the time she circled round to the side of the universe Roland could see, she had become a sparkling comet.

Cuthbert had seen neither the comet nor the girl. His one dark eye was still focused on Roland’s face. “Why, then I shall kiss you,” he promised. “If you believe our love is true, then I believe in true love’s kiss. Can you?” 

“This is my dream.”

Cuthbert’s smile widened momentarily. He put his hand on Roland’s cheek and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.

Roland responded to the gentle touch. He closed his eyes.

Jake opened his.


	5. Jake Opened His

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conclusion, epilogue, or cliffhanger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special warnings for this chapter only: Summarizing, Abuse of Poetry

This last bit was Jake's favorite part of his dream: the part where they had needed him and he had saved the day. He was glad that he had woken now and spared himself the rest of it. 

Often, he would dream they walked on to the sea. When they arrived they would be so exhausted that all three of them slept through until the surf came up and bathed more than their feet. But with the surf monsters would come: the real kind that weren't a bit like nasty people. With razor claws, the giant lobster thing would slice off part of Roland's hand, and, when Cuthbert kicked at it, it would eat away his right big toe, hard leather boot and all. Their shells would be wet with briny water, and their guns would fail to fire. Roland would bleed all over the sand, struggling to find dry shells with bloody stumps where the two most useful fingers on his right hand used to be, and Cuthbert would drew his dagger. Before Cuthbert could risk his whole left hand to stab the thing, Jake would brain the monster with the slingshot, but, this time, he would not feel like he'd saved the day. 

The nightmare always got worse.

The lobstrosity's bite was poisonous, and it would invariably take Cuthbert first because he was so thin. He would cover his mouth and waver, suddenly so dizzy Jake’s own balance was affected, and then he would collapse and throw up on the beach. He would be giggling as he wiped his mouth and buried his mess in the sand.

“What is the meaning of this?” Roland would ask, drowning Jake in his emotions: anger, fear.

“Oh, Roland, you will find out soon enough.” And then more laughter. Through Cuthbert, Jake would come to understand the meaning of hysterical.

Roland wouldn’t laugh when it got him. He wouldn’t throw up, either: small mercies were the only ones left.

Hopeless, Jake would help them stumble ahead down the beach and wonder what would happen to him when they died. The boy is strong; he’ll carry on my quest. Roland was slipping, but he was still single minded. Could Jake do it? Could he deserve this hard man’s faith?

Yes, Cuthbert would answer without knowing. Neither man would speak aloud much anymore, but Jake’s survival was on both their minds. He is a natural with the slingshot, Cuthbert would be thinking, soon, he’ll have the guns. Did I show him how to preserve meat? “He watched you, Bert. Come on, I’ve got you:” a young man, wild yellow curls, round blue eyes, a smile hidden in his beard - Alain. “You’re a right trickster, Bert, a thorn in everybody’s side. You can cheat death one more time. Crawl out onto that ledge and take his scythe while he is sleeping. I’ll be here to catch you if you fall.” 

Whether he was a figment of Cuthbert’s feverish imagination or a true piece of that long dead man chipped off and left behind in Cuthbert’s brain Jake would not be able to tell, but, as Cuthbert dwindled, Alain’s ghost would appear more and more often, sometimes well and strong, sometimes covered in blood. Sometimes Cuthbert would see his gory corpse standing there, smiling kindly, next to Jake. "This was yours," he would say, fingering the wound nearest his heart.

Jake would make an effort to stay out of Cuthbert’s head. 

Eventually, they would come to a set of magic doors the man in black told Roland to expect. They would lead back to the real world where Jake lived, but not to the right year, and only Roland would be able go through. Then, when he did, he would end up inside of people. Those people could come through to their side, though - first, the Prisoner: a friendly guy, Eddie, who was a drug addict just like Jake's parents but lower class and much, much nicer. 

Eddie would bring medicine, but not enough for two, and Jake would see first hand at last exactly what it meant that Cuthbert's life and death were forfeit. 

“Not unnecessary,” Cuthbert, clumsy but still lucid, always slurred, pushing Roland’s shaking hand away and hiding his mouth in his right shoulder. 

Roland would sit facing him with one of the precious antibiotics still balancing on his unsteady fingertips for just a moment; then, he would dry swallow the pill. Afterwards, he would coax Cuthbert’s sweaty face towards his again and kiss him: forehead, both cheeks, lips. 

I love you, said the kisses. Jake would hear them in his head. Thank you. You have served me well. Goodbye.

Was this what true love looked like?

It didn’t matter - Cuthbert’s goodbye would be long and terrible. He would not die off right away, and no one would be able to bear leaving him behind while he was still alive. 

The nightmare continued.

Even medicated, Roland would deteriorate, and soon he would no longer be able to help Cuthbert, even weaker, lug himself along. Soon, he would not even remember he was there.

“Cuthbert,” Roland would say, “no, stop. Don’t blow that Horn this time.” 

He would say this to Eddie, and Eddie, sweating with the shakes himself, would look over his shoulder back at where Jake dragged the real Cuthbert, eerily silent in his own pre-death delirium, half crawling through the sand.

Behind the next door there would be the Lady of the Shadows: a crazy woman, sometimes kind and sometimes murderous. Behind the third would be the Pusher: the man who had murdered Jake.

In waking life, Jake remembered that death vividly now - that death that never happened: the pain, the smell, the stifling weight of the oncoming darkness. And the world around him, too: the bright spring New York City sun, the warm asphalt, the shrieks of distraught bystanders, the special suicidal horror washing through the man who - accidentally - had run him down, the ecstatic satisfaction of the psychopath who shoved him off the sidewalk, snuffing out one life and ruining another.

Roland would be inside that psychopath, and Jake would be watching for another one - the crazy woman, missing, and no longer kind at all. Next to his nervous foot, Cuthbert would still be clinging on to life, his breathing audible and thick, his limbs too weak for him to move, his mind . . . Jake would not touch it anymore. The psychopath on Jake’s side of the door would be waiting for Jake to be distracted, and he would be, every time. Jake always gasped and turned around to stare when, in the corner of his eye, he saw his own back through the door . . .

And there was never any more than that. 

Oh, Jake was glad this time he’d woken up before he dreamed the really helpless stuff, the stuff that made his blood run cold, but the worst thing of all was this: even the nightmare parts felt more like home than Jake’s honest to goodness real life. He remembered telling Cuthbert how alone he felt, and that was true, but this recurring dream wasn’t a comforting fantasy. 

For one thing, it was not particularly comforting. Sure, he had a father, who was violent, stern, and self absorbed, so maybe it made sense that he would dream himself a better one, who, in addition to being those things, pursued some vague but lofty goal and cared - if just a little bit - for Jake. But what about the part where he was letting his own best friend die so he could live? What about the part where he left them behind? What about Cuthbert? Kids weren’t supposed to dream up, become disenchanted with, forgive, and kill off their imaginary friends in one night’s sleep. Jake didn’t think so, anyway. He wasn’t really friends with any other kids. Cuthbert was terrifying and a murderer, but - imaginary or not - he was still the best friend Jake had ever had, and Roland was the best father, and it was not a comfort - not one bit - to dream about them dying on that beach.

For another, it was not a fantasy. Jake was sure he had been pushed in front of that car and woken up and met the gunslingers. These felt like real memories, and his head ached when he tried to reconcile them with the memories of his ordinary life. His head ached, also, with the thoughts and feelings of the people in New York. There were almost eight million people in the city; he’d found out when he asked his Social Studies teacher at the Piper School. The touch was real; he just hadn’t been aware of it before. Now, he was losing his mind.

His grip on reality finally broke down in English. Three weeks from the day of Jake’s death and the start of his new life in dreams, one week before his school let out for summer, Jake watched his teacher come around to collect their final essays. Jake had his, but he couldn’t remember writing it. He snuck a nervous peek. The first page read:

> MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH  
>  By John Chambers

Not John, Jake, Jake thought.

> _I will show you fear in a handful of dust_ \- T.S. “Butch” Eliot
> 
>  _Better this present than a past like that_ \- Robert “Sundance” Browning
> 
> The gunslinger is the truth.  
>  Roland is the truth.  
>  The Prisoner is the truth.  
>  The Lady of the Shadows is the truth.  
>  The Prisoner and the Lady are married. That is the truth.  
>  The waystation is the truth.  
>  The Lieutenant is the truth, but sometimes he is dead and rotten.
> 
> There are other worlds than these. That is the truth:
>
>> Once Sleeping Beauty was trapped in a tower surrounded by thorns.  
>  Once there was a Captain who so loved his Lieutenant that he stopped the hand of death and plucked him from his grave.
> 
> They grew up in a city with high walls. That is always the truth.
> 
> We went under the mountains and that is the truth.  
>  There were monsters under the mountain. That is the truth.  
>  The Pusher is the truth. He is a monster.
>
>> Once the Lieutenant did not let me fall.
> 
> Always Roland tries to save me from the Pusher.
>
>> Once the Lieutenant was my best friend.
> 
> I love Roland even when I die.  
>  That is the truth.

He flipped the paper over. The second page was about trains and bad riddles. In the middle of this, Jake had written:

> I want to go back and that is the truth.  
>  I have to go back and that is the truth.  
>  I’ll go crazy if I don’t go back and that is the truth.

On the next page, Jake had pasted two pictures: a photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa cut out of a travel magazine, which Jake had scribbled black, and a Jack of Diamonds playing card - a one-eyed jack, the one Jake's father, as cutthroat at poker as he was at his job at the Network, called the Laughing Boy. Underneath the card, in red crayon to match the suit, Jake had scrawled, WATCH ME.

At the bottom of this page was another quotation:

> _But on the other side it didn’t say anything_ \- Woody “Go the Distance” Guthrie

Jake flipped the paper over. It was indeed as blank as Jake’s own mind had been when he woke up in the waystation. His mind wasn’t blank anymore, though. He remembered everything. He was going to find his way back, and that was the truth.

Jake raised his hand. “I’d like to step out for a moment if I may.”

***

The following afternoon, Jake stood in front of an old mansion in Brooklyn.

After he walked out of English class, out of the Piper School, never to return again, Jake had wandered the streets of New York - he had been to a bookshop and come away with books about riddles and trains; he had found the key to the door back to Roland’s world and seen a rose that the touch told him must embody all the cosmos he had seen in Roland’s dream. Roland had thought that he was strong enough to carry on his quest. Was Roland dead by now? No, surely not. He was the truth. Was Cuthbert?

That night, Jake had finally dreamed something else: Eddie, the Prisoner, had come to him and told him where to go, and, in the morning, Jake had gone. He’d gone to Brooklyn and found Eddie - barely older than Jake was himself in 1977 - and secretly followed him and his horrible brother all the way to this place on Dutch Hill. Eddie and his brother hadn’t stayed for long, and Jake could hardly blame them. It was a place of death and murder and madness, and Jake was scared, but he had faced down all those things before.

This was the place; this was the time; this was where Roland was going to Draw him through just like he Drew the Prisoner and the Lady of the Shadows. 

Jake took a deep breath. He forced himself to step forward - through the overgrown garden ( _What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only . . ._ ), through thoughts and memories and fragments of poems that Jake had never read ( _A heap of broken images . . ._ ) called forward by the touch: 

__

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust:_

Cuthbert began to cough. The sound was dry and terrible, as if his lungs were full of sand.

( _. . . where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only . . ._ )

“Drink!” Roland kept dreaming of water. 

The underground river roared. The metal of the broken trestle squealed and screamed. Jake fell. 

The girl caught fire. 

_I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face_. His intact eye blinked once, then went on staring lifelessly. A spot of red dirt caught on the end of his nose. ( _There is shadow under this red rock_ )

_Better this present than a past like that._

_(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),_  
_And I will show you something different from either  
Your shadow at morning striding behind you_

He found a place in the gunslinger’s long shadow.

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
I will show you . . ._

Cuthbert, young and handsome, was burying his hands in yellow hair. There was a lot of blood. “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

Jake kept on walking.

“ABSOLUTELY _NO TRESPASSING_ UNDER PENALTY OF LAW!” the sign on the lawn said.

_But on the other side it didn't say anything._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


. . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the unjumbled second stanza from T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ :
>
>> What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
> Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
> You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
> A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
> And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
> And the dry stone no sound of water. Only  
> There is shadow under this red rock,  
> (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  
> And I will show you something different from either  
> Your shadow at morning striding behind you  
> Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
> I will show you fear in a handful of dust . . .
> 
>   
> In King's _The Waste Lands_ , Jake's final essay quotes the first line of Robert Browning's _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came_ : "My first thought was, he lied in every word." The quote in this story, "Better this present than a past like that," comes much later in the poem after the reminiscences about his long lost friends. ("I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face . . .")
> 
> The Woody Guthrie quote is from "This Land is Your Land." There are several variations of the stanza that includes that phrase, but my favorite is the "No Trespassing" version published on [WoodyGuthrie.org](https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm)


End file.
